God predestinated us unto sonship according to the good pleasure of His will; He chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy before Him in love, and He wants to make us sons of God in full, expressing God corporately.
Hallelujah for the great will of God, the eternal will of God, which is to have a corporate expression of Himself in humanity!
The will of God is not merely related to things such as what should we do today, whom should we marry, or what city to live in; the will of God has to do with what God desires to do, what is in His heart to do.
According to Colossians, the will of God is concentrated in Christ and is for Christ to have the first place in all things. Then, according to Ephesians, the will of God is related to the church as the wife of Christ and the corporate expression of Christ.
The will of God, therefore, is to have Christ and the church, the Head and the Body – the corporate Christ, the corporate expression of God on earth, consummating in the New Jerusalem.
God’s will is to obtain the church as the Body of Christ; this church becomes the bride of Christ to meet the Bridegroom, and for eternity all of God’s redeemed people will be the New Jerusalem to express God in splendour and glory.
Right now God in Christ as the Spirit (the entire Triune God) is working within the believers in Christ to accomplish His eternal will; God works in us to obtain the New Jerusalem!
What God is after is the New Jerusalem, the wife of the Lamb filled with the glory of God for His eternal expression in the new heaven and new earth!
There is a connection between us knowing the eternal will of God by revelation and our present situation.
These days we are in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, and we may think that everything else around us stops and that nothing is going on.
However, God has a will, and according to His will He works within us to gain the New Jerusalem!
In Rev. 21 an angel said to John, Come here, and I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb; John might have expected to see a person, but what he saw when he was in spirit on a great and high mountain was the holy city, Jerusalem, having the glory of God!
This is what God is after: He wants to obtain the New Jerusalem as a corporate person, who is also the kingdom of God.
God’s will is to have Christ as everything to us, and to have the Body of Christ built up, the bride of Christ prepared for the kingdom, and that there would be an eternal marriage in the new heaven and the new earth!
There’s so much love at the heart of this, for this is a divine romance!
God Predestinated us unto Sonship according to the Good Pleasure of His Will
In Eph. 1:5 we see that, according to the good pleasure of His will, God predestinated us unto sonship.
First, God chose us in Christ to be holy and without blemish (v. 4); we had no choice in this – God didn’t wait until we were born and then ask for our permission: He simply chose us to be holy, filled with His holy nature!
And He predestinated us unto sonship according to the good pleasure of His will!
As sons of God, we express our Father; the many sons of God are the components of the New Jerusalem to be the eternal corporate expression of God.
Our God has a will, in which is His good pleasure; the good pleasure of God is of His will and is embodied in His will, so His will comes first (vv. 5, 9, 11).
In our experience we can testify that, when we do the will of God, we are filled with delight and enjoyment beyond description, because we are touching the desire of God’s heart, and we are living and working it out.
God’s good pleasure is what makes God happy; it is the desire of His heart, for our God has a heart’s desire.
Our living, loving, and purposeful God surely has a heart’s desire, and according to His pleasure He has predestinated us to be His sons, according to the desire of His heart.
We need to realize that we are predestinated to be sons according to His good pleasure, the desire of His heart; when this dawns on us and becomes real to us, it will motivate us and we will be full of joy and thanksgiving to the Lord.
Even in the midst of this crisis, we have the delight of being sons of God, and the Lord can use even these circumstances to advance His purpose in this way.
God the Father delights in every one of His children, and He can be fully at rest only when the Father’s house with its many dwelling places (see John 14) is fully occupied.
He is happy that we as believers in Christ have been brought home in the church as the Father’s house, but He wants many others – many sons of God who are precious to Him – to be brought home into the church, the house of God.
How precious are the saints, the sons of God, whom God has predestinated to be holy before Him in love!
Even before the foundation of the world, God chose us to be holy; for us to be made holy means that we’re sanctified by God through His dispensing of Himself into us and then mingling His nature with us.
Us being made holy is the process, the procedure, for us to be sons of God.
To be sons of God is the aim, the goal, and it is a matter of our being joined to the Son of God and conformed to the image of the Firstborn Son of God so that our whole being may be “sonized” by God (v. 5; Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15).
What a shame it is, however, for many believers to be genuinely regenerated by God and washed by the blood, yet still live in a worldly and common way, with no mark of holiness in their living!
What a shame it is to God and to the church that many believers are the same as their neighbours, friends, and relatives, and while they speak of God and the church, they don’t live as holy sons of God!
May we give ourselves to the Lord daily to be saturated with the nature of God and be fully sanctified to live like sons of God.
We have the life of the Son of God in us, and besides our natural being (born of our parents) we have a new being (which is born of God).
When we live in the mingled spirit, we have the feeling of the Spirit, we are saturated with the Spirit, we reject what the Spirit rejects, and we cannot act against the nature of God which is in us.
May we not only rejoice for being predestinated by God unto sonship, but may we also contact the Lord in spirit and allow Him to saturate us with His holy nature so that we may be sanctified sons of God, those who express God!
Thank You Father for predestinating us unto sonship according to the good pleasure of Your will! Hallelujah, God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world so that we may be holy and without blemish before Him in love. We love You, Father, and our spirit witness with the Spirit of sonship that we are children of God! We give ourselves to You, Lord, to be sanctified daily by being saturated with Your holy nature and Your holy element in our daily living. May we live as sons of God, being led by the Spirit, and expressing God in all things. Hallelujah for our holy Father who sanctifies us daily to make us His sons, His corporate expression!
We have been Predestinated according to the Purpose of the One who works all things according to the Counsel of His will
In Eph. 1:11 we see that we have been predestinated according to the purpose of the One who works all things according to the counsel of His will. Hallelujah!
As we look around at what is happening today, we cannot but pray that our Father would operate in all these things to carry out His purpose according to the counsel of His will!
God not only has a will but He also has a detailed plan of working out His will, and everything that happens – though it is hard for us to understand much of the time – is under His sovereign direction.
God’s will has an intention, and God’s counsel is His consideration of the way to accomplish His will, His intention.
God has a will, and as He was considering how to accomplish His will, He had a council among the Godhead before the foundation of the world to make a counsel, a decision, which is His determined will (1 Pet. 1:20; Rev. 13:8; Eph. 1:11).
God made a detailed plan – which is beyond our understanding – to carry out His will, and then the sovereign God causes all things to work according to His will!
No matter what the enemy does, he will eventually be defeated, and God will change death into life!
We may look at the things happening around us today, from the immorality in the society, the rebellion of people against God and against any deputy authority, and the pandemic taking place, and we may think, What is God doing right now?
Well, right now, an aspect of God’s determined will is being carried out. On one level, we all are citizens of a particular country, ordinary human beings, and we obey all that the government asks us or commands us to do; we even take the lead to obey the authorities.
On another level, however, we seek the Lord how to have the church life, how to meet with the saints and be built up together, and how to care for one another and care for the new ones.
Furthermore, there is another level, in which we seek the Lord and pray one with Him to tell Him,
Father God, what is Your will in this matter? How would You use this situation for the carrying out of Your will? We join You in prayer to limit the enemy and release Your will to be done on earth! Amen, Lord, may Your will be done on earth right now!
We see that the enemy is trying to destroy the human race and usurp the earth and, though outwardly we are like the other people, inwardly we are in another realm.
We are here living for God’s will, according to His good pleasure and counsel, and we pray for His will to be done! God’s will was hidden in Him as a mystery, so Eph. 1:9 says speaks of “the mystery of His will”.
Oh, what a mercy it is that we can know what the mystery of God’s will is, because it was revealed to the apostle Paul and he wrote it in his epistles!
In eternity God had a will, but this will was hidden in Him; hence, it was a mystery (Eph. 1:9; 3:3-5, 9).
In the pleasure of His heart and in His wisdom and prudence, God made this hidden mystery known to us through His revelation in Christ, that is, through Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension (Eph. 1:9; John 1:14; Rom. 1:3-4; 4:25; 8:3, 34).
Christ has come to do the Father’s will and He was absolutely one with God’s will. Such a One is now being wrought into us to make us the same as He is, the sons of our Holy Father to be His corporate expression and to deal with His enemy, thus carrying out God’s will!
Hallelujah, we were predestinated according to the purpose of the One who works all things according to the counsel of His will! Father God, according to Your will, operate in us and have a free way on earth today! Carry out Your purpose according to the counsel of Your will! Amen, Lord, may Your will be done and Your kingdom come on earth! May all Your believers see the mystery of God’s will, be joined to the will of God in prayer, and carry out God’s will through their living and their fighting prayers!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Ephesians, msg. 4 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Will of God (2020 spring ITERO), week 1, The Mystery of God’s Will in the Universe Ultimately Being to Head Up All Things in Christ through the Church as the Body of Christ.
- Hymns on this topic:
– God, our Father, we adore Thee! / We, Thy children, bless Thy Name! / Chosen in the Christ before Thee, / We are “holy without blame.” / We adore Thee! we adore Thee! / Abba’s praises we proclaim! / We adore Thee! we adore Thee! / Abba’s praises we proclaim! (Hymns #5)
– What miracle! What mystery! / That God and man should blended be! / God became man to make man God, / Untraceable economy! / From His good pleasure, heart’s desire, / His highest goal attained will be. / From His good pleasure, heart’s desire, / His highest goal attained will be. (Song on, What miracle! What mystery!)
– Church of God, beloved and chosen, / Church of Christ for whom He died, / Claim thy gifts and praise the Giver, / Ye are washed and sanctified. / Sanctified by God the Father, / And by Jesus Christ His Son, / And by God the Holy Spirit, / Holy, Holy, Three in One. (Hymns #825)
About aGodMan
